Caecus
by teremala
Summary: Alloran is freed of Esplin, but not of their memories. Set mid 54, this expands upon Alloran's role in events immediately following the war, attempting to understand how things ended the way they did.
1. Confounded

‹Welcome back, War-Prince Alloran.›

I had never thought to hear that name - _my_ name - spoken in tones of respect again. I was, after all, Alloran, Butcher of the Hork-Bajir; the blood-thirsty, grief-stricken, possibly insane War-Prince who had allowed himself to be infested by one of the Yeerk scum, who had given that megalomaniac known as Esplin Nine-Four-Six-Six _Prime_ access all the secrets of the Andalite military and the ability to morph, who hadn't even managed to kill himself during the entire length of his captivity despite numerous opportunities. I was Alloran the shamed, the shunned, the traitor. In a very real way, I was the _true_ Abomination in the eyes of the Andalite people.

But I was also, for the first time in umpteen years, free. And this young _aristh_ standing in the helm, trembling yet with the weight of his defiance, had welcomed me back.

The ways in which this universe works are strange. It was strange that Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill, of all people, should be my savior; strange that he should be so much like his brother Elfangor and yet so very different. He was trembling, yes, but he had still issued a challenge, had still supported for his human allies, and had accepted my help. He had not doubted me, had not sneered at me, had not even been able to kill me that long-ago day in the grassy Earthen field. At the time, I had cursed him his sensibilities, cursed him and felt doomed to be forever thwarted by sentimental fools like he and his brother. I had raged; even the Yeerk, once returned to his smug and lofty place about my brain, had been drawn into my madness and raved with me against Elfangor, against Aximili and his allies, against memories best forgotten and yet unforgettable and unknowable.

But now I was free. That thought kept returning to me, much the way its evil brother had run through my brain after my enslavement, sniggering and swaggering insidiously into all of my dreams of release, yet infinitely more welcome. It delighted me with its sheer potential.

I was free. It was real, yet not; it was an impossible dream, yet here I was, moving my stalks, whipping my tail, dreaming of running across the blue fields of my home, all without the mocking voice of the Yeerk overlord tormenting me and denying my existence as anything but an incredibly versatile host body. I was here, and he was in the human box that had contained the excellent flecked disks, never to torment me again.

I did not speak to him. I wanted to; wanted to shout and gloat and - if I was being completely honest - slice him into little Yeerk pieces. The human Jake, dubbed _Prince_ by Aximili and respected as one of such rank, had said he was not to be harmed, yet I longed to avenge myself. I couldn't imagine what form of justice these humans might dispense to their prisoner; they must have hated him almost as much as I did, yet they seemed reluctant to do any more harm, deflated by the aftermath of the bloody battle.

‹What are they, these humans of yours?›I said quietly to Aximili. It had been so long since my voice had been projected in anything but a violent shout that I felt reluctant to speak to the room at large, certain I would sound the Visser they had fought against for so long. ‹What will they do now?›

Aximili regarded at me soberly, sadness and regret etched in every line of his body. ‹I do not know, War-Prince Alloran. They are my -- friends, but they have fought a long, bitter war they never expected to go on so long, or to require so much of them. I no longer know what they will or will not do.›

I looked at the humans, seeing signs of what Aximili spoke of. The Yeerk who had lived in my head had taken very little notice of human forms of expression, but I remembered, in a foggy, distant way, a journey long ago with two humans and two young _arisths_ who had resented being shoved off on a low-level mission with me as much as I resented the implications of being given a crew of untrained nobodies and their pet aliens. I recalled how shocking it had been to be able to see the aliens' emotions in their facial expressions, despite their strange rounded eyes and gaping red mouths. Now, looking at these human children - especially the silent boy who was also a bird - I remembered more clearly those humans, and their expressions of disappointment and grief.

It was for the girl.

Watching through my eyes as the Visser stared, shocked, into the screen displaying his Blade Ship and its crew of traitorous Yeerks, I had seen a flash of yellow billowing from beneath a workstation along the far wall. An image had leapt unbidden into my mind of one of the aliens, a strange girl with unsightly long hair that same color, frowning as the idealistic _aristh_ tried to explain quantum physics, or some other such ridiculous topic, to her. That girl seemed to haunt my memories, appearing in the oddest of places. I remembered her laughter, as Elfangor - again, Elfangor; always, Elfangor! - saw for the first time that I was infested. But how could that be? Why should a laughing alien child and a great warrior like Elfangor be present at such a moment? How had I lived, if Elfangor had seen me so, undefended in that moment of vulnerability? I remembered also her mind, that child - remembered feeling it beat back Esplin's will, remembered the shock that somehow reverberated through our tiny circle as she proved herself our match...

But the girl was dead, now, killed by one of the few morph-capable Controllers she had left alive, killed in her own body as she lay mortally exhausted, wishing only to say good-bye to her human friends. Her human friends - and, strange as it may be, Aximili, not Elfangor - who now mourned her death; mourned, perhaps, _all_ of the deaths.

The mysteriously morph-capable _nothlit_ seemed most affected. He had returned to his bird form and now perched on one of the many bars attached to the walls of the craft. He seemed to glare an especial hatred at Esplin, as if he wanted, as I did, to strike the Yeerk where it lay, yet he made no move. I remembered his earlier venom as he had yelled: "He's the one responsible for all of this!" pointing at me - at the Visser - wanting nothing more than to kill us himself. I remembered his tears as the female fought. I wondered if these humans felt bound to their prince as Aximili did, that they would aid in a plan they so clearly hated. I wondered why that strange girl was so important to the boy, and why he reminded me so of her. I thought of asking, but could not find the words to express all that I wanted to know.

Esplin had been so certain that these children were highly trained Andalite warriors, but now here they stood, uncertain and apparently unwilling to act. They did not seem triumphant, did not even seem to care that they had won. I understood, I thought; winning the war does not erase the past.

The messenger returned, his expression carefully neutral.

‹Captain Asculan issues the following orders: Four Escafil Devices will be made available to _aristh_ Aximili to use as he sees fit. _Aristh_ Aximili is hereby elevated to the rank of Prince. Prince Aximili is appointed liaison between the Andalite fleet and the people of Earth.›

Aximili absorbed this information, impassive. I wondered if he would have reacted any differently had the orders been to strike his own head from his neck.

After a pause, he said,

‹Thank the Captain for me. I will carry out my duties. My challenge is hereby withdrawn.›

The words were correct, but it was clear that they were naught but form. The humans looked just as morose as Aximili sounded. Even their leader, Prince Jake, was silent. They occasionally glanced at one another, or toward me and then quickly to the box that lay on the floor, but most often their eyes focused on the one who was not there: the brave female with the yellow hair.


	2. Confrontation

We had been left alone in the dome of the _Elfangor_, a strange mix of aliens bound together primarily by our exclusion from any position of command. The remaining three humans were huddled together near one of the many trees, seemingly comforted by the proximity of their fellows. Even from the grassy field where Aximili and I ran, it made me feel anxious to see them crowded together so. The strange morph-capable _nothlit_ who claimed to also be human seemed to agree; he was perched in a tree a good distance away from all and glared, perplexingly, at the dome itself.

The resident scientists had been prodding at the _nothlit_ for days. Some were of the opinion that he wasn't really sentient at all but merely some cruel experiment of the humans'; others believed that he was at least partially human, but refused to accept his story of being a _nothlit_, despite the obvious evidence that was his ability to remain in his bird form well past the time limit and still morph. All scoffed his attempts to draw the mystical Ellimists into the works, though even Aximili supported his claim. Far more worrisome to my mind, however, was the strong resemblance of his human morph to the yellow haired human of my memory.

Noticing the focus of my stalks on the bird, Aximili spoke.

‹He is my _shorm_.›

I remained silent, not knowing how to reply. Still uncertain what the _nothlit_ was or how he was involved in any of this, I was entirely unprepared for such declarations. _Shorm_. It was a word seldom spoken of, a bond never questioned; to ask Aximili to explain himself would be unthinkable, yet that was precisely what I wanted.

I had slowed in my running, thoughts more on the strange puzzle that had been set before me than on consuming the good grasses of home. The long winding steam, gurgling between its sloping banks, was nearby; I made my way toward it rather than address Aximili.

_Shorm_. _Shorm_ with a...what _was_ he? Was he human, as he claimed? It seemed unthinkable; unthinkable that a human should find a way out of the prison that was being trapped in a morph and not share this gift, unthinkable that Aximili should have befriended such a one. _Shorm_.

As I dipped a hoof into the brook, I stated, mainly for the sake of having a response, ‹Aldera was a _nothlit_, in the end.› Perhaps I could tell him of her devotion to the Hork-Bajir, how she gave so much - too much? - for her own _shorm_. Perhaps -.

‹Yes, I know,› Aximili replied calmly. ‹I met her, once.›

I swung my stalks around to stare at him. He _knew_? _He_ knew _her_? How could he possibly? How could anyone? She had died on that miserable planet, died along with the Hork-Bajir child she claimed as her own; died because of my actions, and because her father had believed in the decency of others. She had died before Aximili was born; before even his brother had been born, as far as I knew. I wondered then, not for the first time, if anything any of the people of Earth told me would ever make a bit of sense.

‹How?› I asked finally, attempting to keep my raging memories in check.

‹It is a complicated story, War-Prince, and not fully mine to tell. Let me say simply that death is not always a barrier to memories, and that Hork-Bajir know many tales.› He had moved to stand beside me at the stream, his hoof also in the fresh water. I saw one stalk turn back to the tightly bunched humans, now far away and difficult to see clearly; the other regarded me nervously.

Bitterly I reflected that such had been the response to every direct question I had yet asked of anyone: the humans seemed annoyed, or perhaps frightened, by me; Aximili was cryptic and anxious; and the _nothlit_ would not speak to anyone except to say once, resentfully, that if this ship was to be named after Elfangor, it ought to at least have some mice for a hungry hawk. It had made me shudder to hear his voice in my head, speaking that name; I was glad when he was silent.

‹Did you...› Aximili began, hesitantly. I looked sideways at him, through one of my main eyes; he was shifting slightly from one hoof to another, still nervous. ‹Do you remember a warrior named Arbron?›

That name; that name alone was enough to propel me into a torrent of memory: the two _arisths_, impatient to fight, impatient to _win_; the two humans, scared of us all yet strangely defiant. The yellow haired female, the one who had died, and the stubborn male, who grew, perhaps out of the universe's sick sense of irony, to be one of Esplin's favorite host-bodies.

‹_Aristh_,› I whispered. ‹_Aristh_ Arbron until that final day...until I lost them both...›

We had traveled in my ship, my _Jahar_, each thoroughly tired of the others before the first day was out. There was a mission - a slow mission. We were to drift toward the planet Earth at sub-relativistic speeds to return the humans to their home. But we didn't; we didn't, and Arbron was lost, Arbron and the other aristh, the one I sometimes dreamt had been Elfangor.

Aximili was staring at me now with his main eyes, his stalks scanning the trees around us. It was deeply ingrained paranoia that made him do that, something neither of the _arisths_ had had. I started to tell him of this, but he interrupted, prompting,

‹Elfangor.›

This echo of my own thoughts startled me. Had I spoken aloud? It had been so long since I had had control over anything that I suspected I occasionally did voice my thoughts uncensored; Esplin had, of course, never let any words leave my head but those he had dictated, and I had fallen out of the habit of conversation. Even when I was free of him, it did not matter how loudly I screamed or how subversively I whispered, for my voice was contained within a device Esplin claimed was of his own making, and died unheard. For a brief time, I had been able to converse after a fashion with the psychic Leerans, unfettered by Esplin's grip on my voice, but that was long ago.

‹Elfangor?› I repeated cautiously, testing the name against my memories of the Andalite, and of the _aristh_. ‹No; it was not Elfangor. But I...I cannot think of his name.›

‹You've...forgotten. His name.› Aximili looked incredulous, and no wonder; the shame he believed I had admitted to was great. One did not simply forget a name, a name given by tradition stronger than law. The second and third names might be dropped by friends, or in conversation, but to simply _forget_ was anathema. He paused, then nodded. ‹Okay. But what was he _like_?›

His use of the humans' expression - a nod and the all-encompassing "okay" - surprised me. Had he even noticed, or was it so ingrained in him as to pass out of his mind without thought? I wondered anew if there was any hope for Aximili's plans to return to the homeworld. Even to one who had lived with an alien in his head for so many years, he seemed at times incredibly foreign. Aximili was not human, of course, but neither was he any longer wholly Andalite.

‹Not forgotten; no,› I insisted, feeling suddenly that it was very important for someone to understand. Aximili was no longer fully Andalite, yet was I either, at that? ‹But it was not Elfangor, could not have -›

‹Arbron said it was Elfangor,› Aximili interrupted harshly. ‹He said he was brave and loyal and -›

‹If it was Elfangor, it was not the Elfangor everyone knew,› I replied in a similar tone, ignoring Aximili's flinch of surprise. ‹You do not understand. They were but children; they thought they knew what was best. He refused to shoot them. The Yeerks. The damned fool refused to kill them! I thought to force him, to teach him - it was a war, people died, he had to know! - but then he...he gave me to them. To the Yeerks. To Esplin.›

I felt my body shuddering, but it was beyond my control. The memories had fallen into place and I wished only that they would return to their widely scattered positions.

Aximili was staring at me now with three of his eyes. The fourth, rather than searching our surroundings as it had been, regarded first the bird flying toward us, then swung around to join its fellows. His focus promised death.

‹No!› he shouted, his tail launching forward to press its blade into the skin of my neck. ‹You lie! You are not my brother's fault! Elfangor was good, Elfangor was brave, Elfangor was -›

‹Ax!›

It was the _nothlit_.

‹Ax, you've got to calm down. I don't care what he did, you can't kill him, not now.›

Aximili spared one stalk for the bird, then added the second in what appeared to be alarm when he noticed the other humans running clumsily across the grass. The bird was himself growing into a human. I wondered vaguely what he meant by the change, but Aximili and his tail-blade were more pressing interests.

‹You didn't hear, Tobias. You didn't hear!› Aximili replied, a surprising note of desperation in his voice. The sharp blade remained suspended near my throat. An image of myself leaning into it, welcoming the harsh flesh into my own, appeared tantalizingly in my mind. No; not that. Certainly I was still capable of killing myself without help.

"I don't _care_," the _nothlit_ repeated in his human voice, coughing through a mouth that was still hard and yellow. He reached out with a still-forming arm to clasp Aximili's shoulder. "We didn't kill him during - during the _war_ when Visser-fucking-Three was in his head, and you are not going to kill him now over some argument."

Aximili's main eyes were now focused squarely on the human boy, though his stalks were no less deadly in their regard of my throat and my own tail.

‹He said Elfangor gave him to the Yeerks, Tobias. That Elfangor was responsible for this - this _abomination_.›

More than the tail-blade at my throat, more than the necessity of being saved by this half-human child, more than the horror of my recent realization, it stabbed at my hearts to hear that word in Aximili's voice.

"Ax!" another human voice cried. It was Aximili's Prince Jake - my prince now, as well, though it seemed unlikely that I would be wanted. "Ax, what are you doing? Tobias?"

The boy ignored his prince, glancing balefully at me before returning his two human eyes to Aximili's face. "Ax, you can't just kill everyone who says something bad about Elfangor. Maybe he's wrong, maybe he didn't mean it. Maybe the Yeerk just told him that. Let up. It's over. It's got to be over."

Aximili slowly nodded his head, reaching across his own chest to place his hand on top of his friend's. Standing thus next to the boy, green eyes meeting brown, he looked more human than I would have thought possible. In different circumstances, I might have thought him in morph.

‹You're right; I'm sorry,› he said after a time, then focused again on me. The look of outrage had not softened, but it seemed to have been restrained. ‹I apologize,› he said stiffly. ‹I asked you to tell me what you remembered; it is my own fault that you did. And I - I should not have called you that. I am sorry.›

The tail blade was retracted from my neck and Aximili stepped backward, arms held close to his torso to show he would not need them for balance, did not plan to attack. Prince Jake looked on, appearing suddenly too exhausted to be interested. For a moment, we regarded one another silently, but then came a sudden burst of noise as the other two humans, a boy and a girl, arrived, wet mouths hanging open and nostrils flaring as they gasped for air.

"What the hell was that about?" the boy demanded of Prince Jake. "I heard them yelling, then you started running and screaming that we had to go find them, but here they are and everything's hunky dory?"

Aximili looked away, his stalks again scanning the area for danger while his main eyes regarded the stream. Prince Jake sighed deeply.

"I don't know, Marco, okay? Ax went nuts and Tobias talked him out of it. That's it."

"But what - why's he -"

"Marco, I really don't care right now. There's nothing I can do!"

"Jake -" the girl began, reaching toward him as the _nothlit_ had to Aximili, but Prince Jake was already gone, long legs carrying him beyond her grasp.

"Damn it," the darkly haired boy muttered, letting himself fall on to the grass with his hands over his face. His words held the cadence of prayer. "God damn it _all_."


	3. Compromise

The planet below had rotated approximately three radians and still I did not know what to make of Aximili's strange questions. Whole land masses had passed out of view, yet Elfangor's name remained clearly in my mind.

So many things confused me; memories tumbled through my mind alongside new information such that it was difficult to tell one from another. The humans morphing, the plot to betray us - no, to betray Esplin. Aximili, Elfangor. Arbron, Aldera. Seerow, even - I could see him still, so certain of himself and his alliance with the aliens, so confident that he was forging a new relationship, helping fellow creatures. I had called him a fool and worse before anyone else had realized the damage, had tried to make him see what he had done, and yet -.

No. Some decisions cannot be revoked, and one that led to the annihilation of so many worlds is certainly such a decision. Aximili made his own decision regarding the humans, as I had made mine regarding the Yeerks, and my Prince.

‹You don't get it, do you?›a voice demanded suddenly.

I was at first uncertain of the source of the words that had interrupted my thoughts. I always heard voices, it seemed. Amongst the humans, there are jokes about such things, about hearing voices in one's head, but an Andalite is never far from mental whispers. This voice, however, was different than those of my memories. It was harsh, it grieved, but it was not screaming and did not plea.

‹What do you mean?›I asked of the bird who was also a human. When I finally located him with my stalks, it was startling to realize how close he had come. His bulging yellowed eyes glared.

‹You don't understand. Ax asked you about Elfangor, didn't he? But he didn't tell you why.›He laughed then, a jagged sound. ‹He was my father.›

I found this apparent non sequitur disconcerting. ‹Who? And how is your parentage relevant to Aximili's question?›

‹God, you're as bad as the rest of them. You hear what you want to hear, and ignore the rest. I said, Elfangor was my father.›

‹But you were human. That is im-.›

‹Impossible. Yeah. You don't need to give me the biology lecture. Forget it. I don't even know why I'm bothering to tell you. You read the letter to me yourself, didn't you? Or _he_ did, anyway.›

He spread his broad wings and flapped to a more distant tree, leaving as he had arrived.

At the mention of a letter, however, an image _had_ come to mind. A small, darkened room, the humans crowded closely enough to make even Esplin feel nervous. He had changed over the years of residing inside my head, Esplin had. No longer did he feel comforted by the press of the bodies of his fellow Yeerks; now even two humans in a small room was reason for irritation. The older male human held a piece of paper, his eyes wide and fingers strangely white. The Henric Chapman host and, presumably, his Yeerkish master, stood beside us, human face twisted into the expression used to indicate great pleasure and pride. He had asked Esplin to come, to speak with this newly infested host and learn of a discovery that had been made. A letter...

A letter from one Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul, Andalite Prince.

‹Elfangor was his father,›I murmured aloud in wonder. That was what the letter had said. Esplin had doubted at first, had began yelling that both were fools to think he would believe such nonsense, but then he had read the letter and retreated suddenly; retreated from everything, even my mind. That was what had gotten my attention, alerted me to the potential significance of what had occurred: Esplin going away.

‹What is it?›I had asked when I again felt his presence in my mind.

‹_Him_,›he had replied in much the same tone the boy had so recently used to describe Esplin himself. ‹Elfangor composed that letter. No one else would know -- no one else would have any reason.›

‹How do you know? All I saw was vague sentiment.›

‹You fool,›he had sneered. ‹That was the defining factor.›

But that boy, the human boy we had read the letter to...

‹Tobias!›I exclaimed, the name suddenly sliding into place. It was the name the nothlit had responded to when the girl had called for him; it was the name beginning the letter Esplin was certain Elfangor had written.

Tobias. Human and yet Elfangor's son. _Tobias_.

The winged boy in question glared down at me from his tree.

‹Yeah?›

‹Did you know? Before then?›

‹No. My god, no. I came so close to dying that day - you were there, and that idiot lawyer, and I was so sure I was just going to start --›he cut off, not finishing the thought.

‹Start what?›

‹Never mind. It's a human thing.›There was great bitterness in his voice.

‹Esplin wouldn't have killed you,›I offered weakly.

He laughed. ‹No, I guess not. I would have, though.›

I nodded my head slowly, not noticing what I was doing until well into the action. I stopped abruptly.

‹Catching, isn't it? Humanity?›

I looked at Tobias sharply through my left stalk. He was too perceptive by half. And harsh - harsher than Elfangor had ever been, even to Esplin.

‹I only meant --›I stopped, uncertain how to proceed. ‹I would have as well. Killed myself.›

‹But you didn't.›

His words stung. ‹It works best when done _before_ the capture,›I snapped.

Tobias was silent for a moment. Then, ‹Did you mean what you told Ax? About Elfangor?›

‹Not that he was a fool. But the rest, yes.›

‹Ah.›He stood silently for a moment, adjusting his feathers with his hard yellow beak. ‹Arbron said he didn't know what happened. That Elfangor went nuts, at the end.›

‹You have spoken with one claiming to be Arbron?›I asked sharply. ‹He lies. Arbron is dead. He was trapped, trapped as a -›

‹Taxxon,›Tobias interrupted. ‹I know.›

He sounded suddenly miserable, as if this were to be his fate, as well. ‹I know. He's on Earth.›

I was shocked. ‹He lives on _Earth_? For how long?›How had Esplin not known? The Taxxons were not as closely tracked as the human hosts, but certainly he should have known of a former Andalite, whatever his body.

‹I don't know. There's other Andalites, too, you know. On Earth.›

I stared at him for a moment with all four eyes. ‹Esplin's Andalite bandits?›

‹Hah. No, that was us. I don't remember their names; Ax could tell you.›

The boy was remarkable. To be Elfangor's son and yet have so little knowledge of Andalites...I doubted he had any idea of the shame he had so casually admitted to. I wondered if humans really did have no capacity for complex memory, or if the boy were simply habituated to being separated from society due to his status as a _nothlit_. As he had been forthcoming thus far, I decided to venture another question.

‹Why do you call Aximili so?›

‹What, Ax? I don't know. Because Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill is a really long name, I guess. Marco gave him that name, after they all got him from the dome.›His voice had gained a curious tone to it, as if this statement pained him.

‹The Dome of the GalaxyTree?›I asked. ‹Esplin searched for that, but we never found any survivors.›

‹It was just Ax.›His words were quick and hard. ‹Look -- I - I've got to go now.›He spread his wings and seemed to stagger into the air, then flew perhaps five meters before plunging into a dense grove of trees. I could not detect any further movement.

‹Tobias?›I called, but he did not answer. I began to trot toward the trees, concerned something had happened to the strange human, but a projected voice halted me, requesting that Prince Alloran meet the captain in his quarters. It startled me anew to hear the name Alloran, let alone Prince Alloran. My mind at first refused to equate the summons with a request for me to do something of my free will.

‹Prince Alloran?›Aximili called, apparently having noticed me as I stood stock-still on the edge of one of the meadows.

‹Alloran,›I said vaguely, feeling distracted. ‹Aximili, I must leave. Would you speak to Tobias?›

‹Yes,›he said. It was then that I noticed that he had been going in that direction before I had spoken.

‹Thank you,›I replied, turning to walk to the entrance of the Dome. I wondered what the captain wanted finally, three days after our surrender of the Yeerk ship.

As I made my way from the Dome to the captain's quarters, it struck me again how very long I had been away from my people. Although the design was easily recognizable, everything seemed to have been expanded so that the corridors were wide enough to easily accommodate at least three abreast and the doors which would normally be less than a tail-length away from one another were set several paces apart. Thinking I had lost myself in the traditionally myriad corridors, I shut my main eyes and listened, trying to place myself within the vast ship by the sound of the engines and the slight sense of pressure drop as one approached the inner bowels of the ship. Both seemed to indicate I was where I had supposed myself to be: _aristh_ quarters.

As if in confirmation, one of the doors further along the too-wide hall opened and a small figure stepped out. Was the war effort so far gone that they had taken to recruiting children? This one could hardly be old enough to have even begun learning tail-to-tail combat; his blade was hardly more than a hand wide. It was ridiculous. Aximili, even now just four years old, looked older than this. Why, the child was still largely furless, his skin still tinged purple -.

Purple. _Purple_.

He was a female.

With that realization, I nearly tripped on my own hooves.

_Poor training_, I thought as her stalks whipped around to stare at me. She ought to have known I was in the corridor before ever stepping out, ought to have heard my hoof-steps along the metal flooring.

‹_Aristh_,›I snapped, hoping to startle her to her senses. It was a preposterous idea, but there could be no other explanation for her presence. Her eyes widened and she moved away from me, stepping sideways awkwardly in an attempt to keep all four eyes on me at once.

‹War Prince,›she said, voice trembling. ‹I was just -.›

‹Alloran!›

I had been watching Offeran-Jibril-Castant's approach, but had hoped he would turn before our paths intersected.

‹Offeran.›

The girl had started again at Offeran's exclamation, stalks swinging to look at him, then back to me. Now she almost jumped, as if we had conspired to trap her between us.

‹_Aristh_,›Offeran said coolly. ‹You may proceed to the Dome.›

‹Yes, Prince Offeran. Yes, sir,›she replied, glancing toward me again with an expression of panic that did not bode well, I thought, for any plans I might have of rejoining Andalite society myself. I moved to one side of the corridor to let her pass, but still she seemed to slide along the far wall as if I were dangerous. Offeran made a dismissive gesture behind her back, safe from her stalks as she never turned them in her rush down the hall.

‹It is ridiculous,›he sneered. ‹It is bad enough when the Academy sends us half-trained children. For a _female_ to be allowed on a Dome ship...›he made a scoffing motion with one hoof. ‹Some day she will die from a mistake a male would never have made, and the Electorate will use it as an excuse to send more of them. Fools, all of them.›

I did not respond. Perhaps he was correct about this female, but I remembered the girl on the Blade ship who had slaughtered so many morph-capable human-Controllers before dying herself, and the one who haunted my memories so. Who were they? Could they be the same creature? Even humans aged; certainly the Henric Chapman host Esplin was so fond of had aged since our fateful journey together. But both had been brave, and both had been female, and if human females could join the war - could do as much damage as the girl had done - perhaps female Andalites could, as well.

Offeran must have noticed my distant expression, for he suddenly began speaking again as if I had replied.

‹Captain wants to see you, by the way. I have to train that lovely little _aristh_ who just slunk by - try to get her to think of where her blade is before she kills someone _else_ with the thing - or worse.›

With that, he clomped off down the corridor, perhaps annoyed that I had not responded more enthusiastically.

.

.

.

.A/N: Two points. First off, if she's reading this: thank you again, Eppy, for beta'ing this chapter; I really appreciate your comments. Secondly - just to avoid a possible complaint - I'd like to note that I do know that Chapman's first name isn't Henric. Props to you for noticing one of Alloran's little quirks. :)


	4. Connection

‹Do you believe in Ellimists, Alloran?›

This apparent non sequitur left me baffled. The Ellimists were, of course, stories for children, although something, deep in my memory, tugged at the idea. I pushed the thought aside; I was so very tired of living inside my past.

‹No,› I replied, rather more harshly than I had intended, my frustration with myself creeping into my voice. ‹No more than I believed any other of my granddame's fanciful tales of goblins and sea-creatures.›

‹Ah, yes, of course,› Captain Asculan replied reasonably from his position by his cabin's hugely bowed window. ‹I not believe in Ellimists, either; no more than I believe in morph-capable _nothlits_, or Yeerks that can exist more than three Earth-days without access to Kandrona.› Behind him, in the curved material, I could see heavily-armed warriors entering the room. I stiffened, twisting my stalks to count them. _Six_.

‹You question me?› I demanded. ‹After all that has happened? Surely you cannot still think...! The Yeerk left my head and is in a _box_. How much more can you need?›

‹And where is this box, War Prince Alloran?› Captain Asculan asked slowly. ‹Is it in Andalite hands? Does the Electorate control our most feared prisoner? Or has he - supposedly! - been left to the judgment of a handful of morph-capable _humans_ and the fool who gave them that power!›

‹Captain Asculan, I assure you, Prince Jake and his people are the single best available choice for Esplin's guards. They have nearly as much reason to hate and detest him as even I. Aximili in particular would never allow --›

‹Aximili! Your stooge _aristh_! You couldn't have his brother, so you'll take the cast-off! He's more human than that bird is - and the bird's more an Andalite than _you_!›

‹Asculan!› I snapped, tail at ready. I leapt forward, but was immediately blocked by two of the warriors I had watched move behind me. One held his blade to my neck - _second time yet today_, part of me noted wryly - and the other, a shredder centered on my hearts. ‹Disarm them!› I shouted.

‹I think not,› Asculan replied. ‹First...›

I stared in horror at the scene forming both behind me and, mirrored, in front. The Taxxon had appeared with surprising suddenness in the cabin, his great red globules of eyes shimmering in the artificial lighting, legs skittering across the metallic floor. That the half-dozen armed warriors present chose to train their tails and weapons on me rather than even acknowledge the presence of the enemy bordered on comical. There seemed little one unarmed Taxxon could do, but _how was he here_?

‹Captain Asculan,› I exclaimed, unable to suppress my sudden panic, ‹there may have indeed been something of a security breach!›

‹I think not,› he repeated, gesturing to his guards to move back.

In that instant, I felt a rush of sheer horror at the scene unfolding: a lone subject, suspected of misconduct, held captive by armed guards in an enclosed space, accompanied by the most voracious creature we had ever encountered: Taxxon. This was a scene I had witnessed hundreds of times before, but always I had been standing in Asculan's position, presiding over the affair. Now it would take only one small injury, a low-power shredder-blast...harmless of itself, but I would be meat.

But no one moved. Even the Taxxon paused, simply lowering the upper portion of his body toward the floor. Of course; he would not rush to attack me until one of the others rendered me immobile. Could I attack first? The Taxxon wasn't worth killing, but Asculan might be too well protected. Was he, then, a Controller as well?

‹War-Prince Alloran,› a voice finally intoned, interrupting my quick thought-speak attempt to recruit the humans' help. It was a voice that reverberated out of the past, haunting my memories as surely as Elfangor and the human female. I let my body slump. This was no physical attack.

‹_Arbron_...› I whispered, half to myself. ‹You lived.›

He laughed. It was indeed Arbron, that _aristh_ who had talked with the swagger of a fighter pilot and had cringed with the sensibilities of a school-child.

‹I lived, my Prince,› he agreed. Arbron, the _aristh_ I had once deemed a warrior - and, moreover, a causality of war.

‹You are Taxxon,› I said. It was harsh, but I had nothing else in my mind.

He seemed surprised, looking at Asculan askance - if such a thing is possible of such an alien form. Asculan laughed, but made no comment. I still wondered how much of this had been an overly dramatic setup, and how much real. Did he honestly still believe me to be infested by Esplin? Maddened, like the poor humans who had been forced to live constantly with deranged and self-sustaining Yeerks in their heads?

‹I am Taxxon,› Arbron repeated again. ‹I have been Taxxon since our first hours on their Homeworld; I will be Taxxon when I die.›

‹...But the hawk...?› I asked, wonderingly.

‹Tobias is no miracle of technology; he is exactly what he claims to be. He saved the Hork-Bajir of Earth in exchange for the return of the morphing ability. I...I saved the Taxxons in exchange for my own freedom.› He waved a claw at himself. ‹This is me, Prince Alloran. If the Taxxons could not be free, then I would have died with them. But they can be - there is now a way.›

‹The morphing technology,› I replied, in private thought-speak. I had already heard Asculan's comments on that subject.

‹Yes. Prince Jake has spoken to my people. They will accept the power. But we need someone trained in the use of the device to offer it.›

‹Me?› I asked. ‹But surely Aximili...?›

Arbron laughed. ‹Prince Aximili will not. He was dropped on Earth as a half-trained _aristh_ and managed once to fumble through the process. The results were, shall we say, less than pleasant? He does not care to repeat that rather disastrous experience.›

‹But his humans? Their prince, Jake? Surely having won a war cannot be described as 'disastrous'?›

Arbron shook his alien head, its coarse features expressing nothing of the amusement in his voice. ‹Now is not the time, War Prince Alloran. Let us return to the Captain.›

During our conversation, the guards had retreated to the edges of the room. ‹Asculan,› I demanded, ‹what was the meaning of this? Armed warriors, to facilitate - ›

‹We had to ensure Warrior Arbron's safety, did we not?› Asculan asked sneeringly. ‹After all, you two go back a long, long way. Perhaps he would have something to say that you would not like to be heard...›

Arbron dragged his huge body around to face Asculan. ‹I have nothing of the sort to say. If this is not a free Andalite standing before me, then I have never known one. He is ignorant of many things, but he is not insane. If the Yeerk known as Visser One is not in the human's box, it is because one of them unlocked it and destroyed him.›

Asculan did not quite roll his eyes, though he would have, had he been human. He had a point: free or Controlled, I would act the same. That was the danger we had all battled against. The Yeerks' weakness for Kandrona had helped offset the threat, helped give one a sense of safety after a certain amount of time had passed, but Esplin and his lieutenants had been working steadily to overcome that. I wondered what would happen when - if? - I told the Andalites the secret of Esplin's twin.

‹Captain Asculan, I offer you this,› I said finally. ‹There are on this planet below us teams of the creatures called Leerans. The former Visser One, Edriss 562, had thought to use them to find the morph-capable humans. The Leerans are strongly psychic, well beyond our telepathic abilities. Find one, morph it, and then tell me I am still ruled by a slug.›

He sneered. ‹That will not be necessary, war prince. We have advanced much further than that since you were last with us. We no longer need resort to crudely stealing other species' abilities to determine basic facts. While it is still technically possible that you are nothing more than a _nothlit_ of Alloran's body, still controlled by a Yeerkish master of one name or another, your brain is your own.›

‹Thank you so much,› I muttered.

Clearly, I had been spending too much time around the humans.

----

He was in morph when I found him. Human; his old body. He was crying. It's something humans do when they are upset. I walked up beside him and he leaned against me, pressing his face into the thicker fur of my abdomen.

‹Ax...› he mumbled into my mind, his human hands clinging to me. ‹I miss her so much.›

I knew. We all missed her, of course – I no less than any of the others – but for Tobias, Rachel's death meant the loss of the one thing that had made him believe he could ever really be human again. Tobias mourned Rachel as I had mourned Elfangor; as I would have mourned him, Tobias, if everything had happened differently.

‹I miss her, too, Tobias,› I said softly. Words couldn't make it right, holding his human form and stroking its hair couldn't make it right, but I had to try. Tobias was my Rachel, tying me to my only hope. He was Elfangor's son; he was my friend.

‹Tobias?› I asked quietly, thinking on my disjointed conversation with Alloran.

‹Yeah?›

‹Do you remember the word 'shorm'? What it means?›

He looked up , eyes and face wet and reddened. ‹Of course. Why?›

‹Just know that I love you, and always will – that's all.›

He smiled shakily, more with his eyes than his human mouth – that's something he's picked up, over the years. But then his features started to shift and pattern as he began demorphing to hawk.

‹I love you too, Ax – but we have company.›

His voice was harsh. It scared me; it reminded me of too many battles. I looked up and focused on the movement that had recently become _stealthy_ instead of merely curious. Suddenly the shock of what I was seeing hit me, a blow to the gut. Not...yes, her!

I had seen a form moving beyond the trees, of course – for a human-morphed Tobias to have spotted it first would have just been embarrassing – but hadn't recognized it for what it was. I stepped back from Tobias to give him space to launch from the log his talons now gripped. My hooves unconsciously sought level ground.

‹Estrid,› I began warily.

‹Yes, Prince Aximili,› she replied. There was no mocking tone in her voice. Her main eyes were wide and she scanned the area beyond me restlessly with her stalks.

‹_Aristh_?› I wondered aloud. A thought-speak roar from the far side of our grove confirmed it.

‹**_Aristh Estrid-Corill-Darrath_**! You haven't by chance ejected yourself from an airlock, have you?›

Estrid cringed at the hopeful note, then daintily leapt _over_ Tobias to answer the summons. As she hurried past me, though, she paused and touched my shoulder.

‹I knew _something_ had happened, but not what! Congratulations, Aximili – oh, congratulations, all of you!›


	5. Conversation

He was lying under a tree, staring through its leaves. I stood a few feet away, feeling helpless.

‹Prince Jake?› I ventured cautiously.

"Go away, Ax," he said quietly, mechanically.

‹Prince Jake, Captain Asculan-Semiture-Langor would like to speak to you. You and the others must -›

"Ax." He turned his head to face me. His face was wet with tears. "Go away. Now. _Please_."

I shuddered to hear at him so hurt and vulnerable. ‹Yes, my Prince.›

In the eyes of the Captain, the humans had somehow become my responsibility. Now I could see why. But without Jake, I could do nothing more than the Captain; on the Dome ship, I was more alien to the others than ever before. Tobias might return to Earth if I asked it of him, but he wasn't what anyone meant when they said "the humans". They – the Captain and his immediate staff – wanted specific humans off their ship: Jake, Cassie, Marco. They needed someone on Earth to handle everything. And if I wasn't careful, if Jake wouldn't retake his role as leader, that "someone" would be me.

I slowly plodded across a stretch of grass. It was good to be back in a Dome, eating the carefully cultivated grasses of my own world, but it made me long all the more to really _be_ home. I felt morose. Seeing Marco approaching did not help; he seemed at times almost perversely cheerful.

"Hey, Ax-man, what's up?"

I shrugged. It was a human gesture, incredibly out of place here, but why should I care? I was likely to be sent right back to Earth, this time as a novelty for the human media to exclaim over. I'd be given some inane title and installed in a government office and I would never see my home again.

"Things are that good, huh?" Marco asked, seeing my expression. Overly cheerful or not, of all of the humans besides Tobias, I generally liked Marco the most. He was perspective, and put his observations to good use.

‹They want you off the ship,› I said. Then, to soften that: ‹The people of Earth need answers. They do not want to talk to more aliens. They are scared and confused. But Prince Jake...›

"Jake's out of it," Marco finished, nodding as he fell in beside me in my slow walk across the field. "He's sitting there killing himself. Rachel's gone. Tom's gone. We saved the world, but Jake, he lost."

I nodded. ‹Yes, and without him...›

"I know. Oh, man, I know. But we've got to do it. You're right – people down there must be freaking out. We have to land, put on a good show for them. God. What do you think, D.C.? I guess it'll have to be. We have to...god, we have to _bury her_. Oh, god..."

I touched Marco's shoulder. We continued to plod along, silent. I did not know what to say. So many people were right about so many different things. So many things needed to happen. So many people needed help. The war was over and won; we should now be able to go back to our lives, but that was impossible.

‹My people will help as much as possible,› I offered finally. ‹We, too, have little experience with this. You'll be provided with a craft –›

Marco looked up at me, suddenly fierce. "What, you're not coming?"

‹Marco, I'm going home.› I said, too weary of all of this to maintain appearances, even for an old friend. ‹You should, too.›

Because my words had hurt him, and because Rachel was not here to do it for him, and because that hurt, too, my friend Marco lashed back at me.

"_Home_," he sneered, shoving my hand away from his shoulder. "Yeah, good luck with that."

He walked away from me, headed toward the edge of the Dome. I did not watch him go. I did not know what to do. I wanted so very badly to go home, but, with the remaining Animorphs still aboard the _Elfangor_, there was no hope of that. I would not be allowed to leave until they were back on Earth, settled into some semblance of normal human life. And, despite my harsh words to Marco, I did not know if I could have brought myself to just walk, anyway.

I sighed. There was no good answer. Marco was only half-right: we had _all_ lost.

I turned to walk back to where I had last seen Tobias. He, at least, would not condemn me for mixed loyalties: his very existence was a careful balance between conflicting desires. But then came a hesitant thought-speak call:

‹Prince Aximili?›

Insult to injury; this was becoming ridiculous. Estrid-Corill-Darrath had somehow returned and now addressed me as "prince", while Jake Berenson, my prince, lay under a tree watching bloody battle scenes replay beyond his eyes. Incomprehensible.

There was a flash of purple by the entrance to the Dome, then she was running across the grass toward me. It was too late to pretend to be elsewhere.

‹Yes, _aristh_,› I replied. In dealing with her, I had decided, it would be best to fall back upon old forms. I still did not know why she was on the _Elfangor_, nor even how she had come to be an _aristh_ in the first place, but now was not the time for retreading our old relationship.

‹Prince Aximili, warrior Arbron would like to see you,› she reported, almost meekly.

Of _course_.

‹_Aristh_, you have delivered that message twice today already,› I observed.

At first, she did not respond. Through one stalk, I saw her digging at the ground in embarrassment, in that moment the girl I had known on Earth. My hearts ached. Earth, Estrid, Tobias ...or _home_.

That was all I really wanted: home with Mother and Father. I would run through the fields and not worry about prying eyes. I would never again have to become some vile creature; I would not act as spy, or diplomat, or mere distraction. I would...I would never see the humans again.

‹I know,› Estrid finally offered apologetically, interrupting my maudlin thoughts. I was grateful. ‹Arbron sent me again.›

_And he sends an _aristh_ to beg me, knowing she will be trapped between us_, I thought but did not say. I did not want to meet with Arbron again. The last encounter had proved near-disastrous when I later confronted Alloran with the story Arbron had given me. I still did not know who the liar between them was, but I certainly was sick of dealing them both. Tobias at least seemed to find Arbron amusing; let my _shorm_ talk to him.

‹Does he say why?› I asked, trying to keep my irritation out of my voice. None of this was Estrid's fault, and there was no sense in punishing her.

‹He says he can help you. Not that...› she trailed off.

I finished that sentence myself. I wanted to laugh. As Marco would say: Help me? Good luck with that. However, it was clear that Arbron was not to be deterred and, though his memory was even more questionable than Alloran's, perhaps meeting with him would be the end of this charade.

I turned to Estrid. ‹Where is he, then?›

Her eyes widened almost gleefully. She was quite enjoying all of this, despite her apologetic tones. A decades-long war was ending and she – somehow, somehow! – managed to be in the middle of it all.

‹In his quarters, Prince Aximili. I will show you the way.›

Despite myself, her comment amused me. I remembered well being the little _aristh_ everyone sent on errands. Of course, I could have found Arbron quite well on my own – on a spaceship, there were only so many possible places for a Taxxon twice the size of a grown Andalite to be - but Estrid had been sent to fetch me, and part of that included the painfully awkward trip through the corridors. We did not talk. What could we have said that did not incriminate us both?

We arrived at Arbron's quarters in short order, as I expected. I dismissed Estrid at the door; there was no need for her to be witness to whatever new bit of information he cared to divulge. She was reluctant to go, but there was little question of her doing as she was told. To be certain, though, I reminded her of the tail-fighting practice with Offeran in the Dome she was no doubt avoiding. She smirked at the mention of "practice" and I mentally cringed with the memory of our sparring matches, but it did not matter: she was gone and I was left to face Arbron.

His room was sparse, even by Dome ship standards. Curiously, there was no grass growing on the floor. He would have had no use for it, of course, but why did they even have such a room?

I stepped inside. ‹Hello, Arbron.›

‹Prince Aximili,› he agreed. ‹Thank you for coming to see me. I have been looking forward to speaking with you again.›

I sighed. ‹What do you want, Arbron?›

‹As I have said: to help. You seem fond of War Prince Alloran, but I wonder...what do you know of him? Do you pity him, thinking the Yeerks made him as he is? No, Alloran's history goes back much further than Esplin 9446. He –›

‹I know of the Hork-Bajir world,› I interrupted, snappish. ‹I know of the _deranged war prince_. I have been told. It has not 'helped'.›

‹Yes, of course,› Arbron allowed. ‹You will have heard that from the _nothlit_ Tobias, speaking for the Hork-Bajir Ket Halpak and Jara Hamee. Or, more directly, from Aldrea-Iskillion-Falan.›

Suddenly paranoid, I began to scan the room with my stalks, allowing my main eyes to focus on his huge form: this is how one prepares for battle. I longed to shout, Arbron laughed. ‹Do not be afraid, Aximili. I have been speaking with Toby Hamee. She really is quite remarkable; I had no idea... She's told me all about you, and Tobias. I'm quite curious, and she is infatuated, particularly with the hawk. And she says the Ellimists...!›

I scoffed. ‹The Ellim_ist_, Arbron, or so I have come to believe. He seems to have taken a personal interest in that planet below us.›

‹Ah, yes. So it would seem. But tell me, is it really Earth he cares about?›

I was puzzled. ‹My experience would seem to indicate that, yes. At times, he speaks of a larger battle, but I have never understood that to mean _our_ war, this war of Seerow's Kindness.›

Arbron looked surprised, or as surprised as it is possible for a Taxxon to seem. _He must have incredible control_, I marveled. I had been a Taxxon before, for a short time; my rational mind had been utterly abandoned to the hunger. For Arbron to be able to express even complex emotions so freely...

‹'The war of Seerow's Kindness',› he sneered suddenly, surprise giving way to the naturally aggressive visage of the Taxxon. ‹You say that as if old Seerow were to blame! Seerow's only fault was that he did not go far _enough_!›

‹What, should he have given himself up for infestation, as well?› I exclaimed, shocked.

Arbron did not respond at first. Then he said slowly, ‹Aximili, you of all people must know what he ought to have done. _The Yeerks must morph_. I did not understand it at the time, nor did Elfangor – the war was too new to us; we were too wrapped up in the battle. But that is the solution; the girl is absolutely correct! They will become _nothlits_; they will not cause any more harm. You yourself --›

I interrupted him sharply. ‹_I supported my Prince!_ However, the lesson of Seerow's Kindness is clear: we _must not_ share technology with other species. Unchecked attempts to do so are to be seen as treason.› _And I was a part of that. I will always be a part of it, if I am not allowed to leave._ ‹This present situation, sanctioned by the Electorate, may well be an exception, but what happened on Earth –›

‹No. Do not say that. You cannot believe that it would have been in anyone's best interests to have destroyed what ability we had to fight the Yeerks. You spoke once to Aldrea,› he protested. ‹Did she believe her father had committed any great sin? For that matter, do you honestly believe that _you_ have committed treachery?›

I shook my head bitterly. He did not understand; he had been apart from our society for too long. Living amongst giant worms as he had for those many years, eating flesh and living under dirt, how could he not have been forced into moral compromises? I knew; I had, after all, lived amongst the humans of Earth.

‹Aldrea was no fit judge. She had been raised by Seerow; his sensibilities were her own. She was too deeply affected by the situation -- look at what she did on the Hork-Bajir world! Alloran may have created the quantum virus, but it was she who made the disaster out of it.›

‹You would have allowed the Hork-Bajir to be annihilated, then? As you allowed Estrid-Corill-Darrath and Arbat-Elivat-Estoni to annihilate the humans?› He swung his giant body around to peer at me with his second set of globular red eyes and, for a second, I saw my fractured reflection looking back at me from all angles.

Oh, but he enjoyed this! The intrigue, this position of being an outsider supposedly come to solve all of our problems. I could not understand Arbron's true role in this political drama, did not know how he had shown up on Earth at such a uniquely opportune moment nor how he had subsequently survived the battle and arrived on the _Elfangor_, but I did not trust him. He toyed with me; he toyed with all of us. I stared at him stonily with my main eyes, wishing I had not continued to avoid him.

‹I could not allow the humans to be annihilated,› I allowed reluctantly. ‹There were alternatives.›

‹So, if there had been no alternatives...?›

‹Obviously, one cannot _know_ that there are no alternatives,› I snapped. ‹Three days ago, Visser One might have defeated us all. Prince Jake's plan succeeded admirably, of course, but nothing was guaranteed. On the Hork-Bajir world, however, there was no Prince Jake. There was a soft-hearted, dishonored scientist, and his wife and children. That is nothing to launch an effective resistance force with.›

I stopped myself. I would not say it. I was breathing heavily, my tail poised to strike. Arbron seemed to be laughing at me, purposely taunting. He had to know that his soft body would disintegrate if I so much as needled it, but he did not even back away. Instead, he asked quietly,

‹And five school-children _were_?›

I quivered with rage. If only he were yet Andalite! He insulted Elfangor, compared him to a traitorous fool, and I could make no move against him. I could not even allow myself to shriek in rage: I was supposed to be a prince, now, and princes cannot always do what _arisths_ are allowed.

‹_Elfangor saved us_,› I hissed harshly. _Why did he suddenly seem surprised?_ ‹Elfangor knew his enemy and he destroyed him. What did you do, worm? You hid on a backwater planet and kept a handful of repugnant beasts alive so they could come to Earth and become senseless, ground-crawling reptiles! You betrayed your people to save _Taxxons_. _Never_ belittle my brother. Don't even speak his name!›

‹Oh, Aximili,› the pus-filled creature proclaimed mournfully. ‹I do not belittle Elfangor; I exalt him! As you say, I've saved only a handful of my people. But Elfangor, _Elfangor_! – he saved almost every one! Below us is a whole _planet_ of Elfangor's people, saved from the Yeerks and the Andalites both.›

With that, I could restrain myself no more. I struck him aside the head with the flat of my blade, not very concerned what I damaged. He staggered backward a few clawed steps, dazed.

‹_The humans were not Elfangor's people_,› I screamed, ‹_and they were never _my_ people, either._›

‹Funny you should bring that up,› the _nothlit_ replied in a voice I can only describe as amused. ‹I hadn't even gotten to that part yet.›

Truly uncaring now, I hit him again, harder. Yellowish phlegm flew in clumps from the point of impact and the Taxxon called Arbron fell to the floor of the _Elfangor_, finally silent.


	6. Conundrum

‹He sees himself as a martyr!› Ax ranted bitterly, pacing beneath my tree. ‹He claims to understand our situation better than we do; he would have it that even Elfangor did not comprehend the 'greater reason' behind giving you the morphing power. Everything is for a reason! Myself, you, this war: everything!›

‹The Ellimist has said as much,› I suggested, weary. I wasn't really in the mood for this discussion, but Ax seemed determined. And at this point, Ax was the only one actually talking to me at all.

‹But that's what the Ellimist _does_!› he protested, as if that proved something. It had been a long time since I had seen Ax so _offended_ about something. ‹He may even be right; he can obviously see and do things that we cannot. But for Arbron to claim the same knowledge...! He's _Taxxon_! He's been living on that vile planet for decades; what could he possibly know?›

‹He's an outsider. Different perspective. Or maybe the Ellimist's been talking to him.›

Ax glared at me. Clearly I wasn't being as supportive as he'd like.

I sighed. ‹Your problem really isn't Arbron, is it, Ax? It's that he might be right. He's a Taxxon, like you said, but he's also an Andalite, just like I'm a hawk and a human both. You can't discount that just because he's a _nothlit_. I know you don't like him, but think about it. He's been around a long time. Yeah, he was living on the Taxxon homeworld. Yeah, his goal in life is to save some carnivorous worms from their own hunger. But that whole time, he's been thinking, he's been monitoring Yeerk communications, he's been going over everything he knew about Alloran and Elfangor and he _used that to get here_. Arbron managed to make it across the galaxy with a whole clan of free Taxxons. How? _Why?_ Don't you think he had to know about us? He knows _something_. He talks to everyone, and everyone tells him something. He just sits there and pieces all of that information together.›

I stopped. Ax was glaring at me as only an Andalite can, four eyes locked in and clearly calculating my every possible move. I hadn't really meant to tear his personal vendetta against Arbron apart quite that thoroughly; like I said, Ax was the only one I had left.

‹Sorry,› I offered weakly. ‹It's just...god, this is awful, but I almost wish we were still fighting. Staying here is killing me. Rachel is killing me. Hell, _Jake_ is killing me. I'm sorry. Go ahead and be mad at Arbron; I think he's as creepy as all hell, too.›

Ax relaxed. By a hair. ‹I do not know exactly how creepy your hell is, but I think I agree. However...you could be right. That he reached Earth with such excellent timing is indeed impressive. And...›

‹What?› I asked in spite of myself.

‹He _does_ listen. I don't think he even knew about Elfangor giving you the morphing ability until we talked. He seemed to be implying that _I_ had, but then I thought...It doesn't matter.› He shuddered, then, as if he was trying to shake something off.

‹Wait, what? What did you guys _talk_ about?›

Ax didn't answer, not really; or maybe he did, and I just didn't understand: ‹_Elfangor_.›

‹Well...,› I said slowly, wondering if Ax would consider this a betrayal. ‹He knew we had the morphing cube, anyway, before. It kinda came up when he met Toby. She...oh, man, she impressed the hell out of him. He thought she was another _nothlit_ - actually, he thought she was an _Andalite_.› I laughed, hoping Ax would, too. He didn't.

‹..._And_?›

‹And I said she wasn't. It kind of pissed me off, actually, him assuming that anyone with half a brain had to be an Andalite – I think he's still convinced that I am, too. Anyway, then Toby said that she couldn't even morph – didn't _want_ to be able to – and Arbron asked _why_, of course, and she launched into this long spiel about _David_, of all people, and 'look at how _that_ turned out'.›

Ax looked even more annoyed than before. ‹I hadn't realized that that situation had anything to do with the Hork-Bajir.›

‹Well,› I said placatingly, ‹it didn't, of course, by and by large. But you know Toby -- she pays attention. She gets things the rest of them don't. And between David and James and everyone, I guess she's decided she's better off sticking with her own people. Something she made abundantly clear to Arbron.›

Ax seemed to wince. I wondered what he was thinking. He didn't seem mad, exactly; more _embarrassed_.

‹She has not spoken to Alloran, has she?› he asked, surprising me. I hadn't even thought of _that_ possibility.

‹I don't think so, no,› I replied. ‹God, I _hope_ not. She went back to Earth a few days ago, kind of suddenly. Maybe she didn't get a chance to talk to him.›

Ax looked at me wryly. ‹As you said, Tobias, Toby 'gets' things. Do you really believe she wouldn't have sought out the 'Butcher' of her people's legends?›

I didn't doubt for a minute that he was right: Toby would have leapt at the chance to meet Alloran. I only wondered what had been _said_.

----

I'd been entrusted with the briefcase, just as I'd once been entrusted with the blue box. Jake didn't seem to care about _that_ disaster anymore, though – or, rather, he cared about everything else too much to focus on my failings.

Inside the briefcase was our enemy: Visser Three of old, lately styled Visser One, now simply a Yeerk living in a tub of grayish sludge attached to a makeshift Kandrona generator pillaged from the Pool ship. His real name, the one poor Alloran knew him by, was Esplin. Esplin 9446 Primary, to distinguish him from his pool-mates and, moreover, his cannibalistic twin. Who was probably still alive on Earth, given.

The Yeerks' empire was destroyed. Earth would not be theirs. We'd won. I wouldn't have to lie anymore. My planet was saved. My family was saved.

And Rachel was dead.

Rachel was dead, Tom was dead, tens of thousands of Yeerks were dead, either when we ejected them into space or during the past three days while we had moped aboard the Dome ship _Elfangor_. Though it had never been said, I was sure that half of the reason for keeping us here had been to make sure. To make sure we weren't Controllers. And, for that matter, to make sure there wouldn't be a Yeerk waiting for each of us when we got home.

I wondered how long we would stay here. I had seen Ax talking to Jake, but both of them were avoiding me, so I didn't know what was said. He didn't stay long, anyway. I didn't see how he could have, with Jake as he was. No one except the dead could talk to Jake now.

I talked to Alloran, sometimes. He was confused about so many things, although he, ever the Andalite prince, rarely admitted it. I think he knew I had Esplin. Maybe not, though; maybe he was just as lonely and scared as I was, desperate for company. He had tried talking to Tobias and Ax, he said, but found it impossible. They were clinging to each other, obviously, and each had his own reasons for not wanting anything to do with Alloran. Why they wouldn't talk to me, I didn't know.

Alloran said the Captain resented us for keeping Esplin as our prisoner. I had asked what the Andalites would do with him, if he were _their_ prisoner. Alloran's eyes had darkened dangerously.

‹He would not _be_ a prisoner.›

That was why I wasn't talking to any of the other Andalites.

I wanted to go home. The war was over and I wanted to be with my parents again. I didn't even know where they were. They had been in the Hork-Bajir valley when we'd left for the final mission, but now, they could be anywhere. I hoped they were safe. I hoped they knew I was safe.

Marco, too, would have reasons to fear for his parents. As the former host of Visser One, Eva would be a target for many. We couldn't hope to keep her rescue a secret much longer, and I doubted that Marco would want to. And Jeremy would be working with the Andalites as soon as he had half a chance – he wouldn't be content to hide away in a mountain valley for long. And Jake's family...

I sighed and leaned back against the towering blue asparagus stalk Alloran had called a _therant_ tree. At the moment, the twin of my own osprey morph was settling into its crown.

‹Hey, kiddo. Crazy spaceship the blue dudes have, huh?›

"Marco," I said, smiling up at him. "What're you doing?"

‹Getting some air. It's been so weird, just lying around as a human.› He fluffed his feathers a bit, restless. ‹I can't believe it's really over, can you?›

I sighed. "It's over?"

He flapped downward to a lower branch. ‹Well. No.›

We were silent for a few moments. Then I felt the tree shudder and heard a thump behind me. Marco-the-boy lay sprawled in the thick blue grass. He grinned hugely and rolled over on his stomach.

"Been way too long," he observed. That could mean almost anything, but, from him, it was our forced confinement, the necessity of being good little humans sitting quietly in the Dome, waiting for word from the Andalites.

"Yeah," I agreed. I tried to smile, but now I couldn't. My eyes were suddenly wet with tears. I leaned forward, head on knees, and then Marco was there, his arm around my shoulders.

"Hey, hey," he said quietly, "I know. It'll be alright. We'll be okay."

I leaned into him, taking comfort in his humanity. The Andalites had tried to make a little world for themselves here in the Dome, but it was alien to me and I could never forget that we were in a bubble, surrounded by light-years of nearly-empty space.

"We have to go home," I said. "I can't stay here any longer. I just can't." I looked up at him; his eyes were on the Dome above us, looking out at our little blue planet.

"Home," he agreed, rubbing my back absently. "Yeah, we do."

"Marco, what's wrong?" I asked.

He looked at me, then, and I wanted to pull away. He seemed suddenly so old and distant; his eyes reminded me of Jake's. He reached out with his leg to prod at the suitcase lying in the grass.

"That's _him_, isn't it?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"Well, that's something that's wrong, for one. What are we gonna do with him, Cassie? Take him home and put him in a goldfish bowl? That's Visser freakin' Three you've got sitting there. Or used to be, anyway. And then there's Alloran. You guys talk, don't you. Where is he going? He going to come live on your dad's land, with Ax? Except, Ax thinks _he's_ going home, too – and he doesn't mean Earth."

"Marco, we always knew Ax would go back. He's just a kid, like us. That's where his family is."

He moved away. "I _know_. But does he have to be so goddamned smug about it? And what about Jake -- what are we going to do about _him_? He's a mess, he can't even contemplate going back to his parents...Tom, Rachel, god. What are we going to _do_?"

He seemed so plaintive, and so utterly incapable of decision. Marco needs action. He lives on having a goal and finding a way to achieve it. They all do: Jake, Marco, Rachel, Ax. Tobias, even, in his own way. The war had given them focus and purpose and now, without it, those who were left couldn't find a path to follow.

But I - the reluctant Animorph, the killer with a conscious - I had resented it every single time the war had forced me into yet another moral compromise. Now, faced with a chance to finally do real good, the first step was perfectly clear to me.

"We're going to go back to Earth, Marco. The three of us, anyway: you, me, Jake. Ax and Tobias are going to have to make their own decisions. But Earth needs us back. Jake's parents need him back, even if he doesn't believe it."

He nodded slowly, troubled and far away. "I just wish it had ended better," he said mournfully.

"It was a war, Marco. No one walks away unbloodied. But now our job is hang on to everything we've been fighting for."

"You're right," he agreed, pushing off the ground and then turning around to haul me up after him. "You're absolutely right. Let's go get Jake -- we're outta here."


	7. Communion

I was free of the Yeerk Esplin, yes, but now I found myself shackled – _re_-shackled, really – by my own people. I retained the rank of War Prince, and with that came many obligations. Many, many obligations, when one was the honored guest of a Captain whose sole purpose in life seemed to be sadistically thwarting one's plans.

In some ways, I understood Asculan's position – one could not maintain control of a fleet, or even a Dome Ship, by first running decisions by the former host-body of one's greatest enemy. But though the Andalites of all peoples should understand the difference between host and Yeerk, it was becoming obvious that few honestly could.

I found it strange, this feeling of confinement within the great structure that was the Andalite military. For so long it had been my very life and, while I had not always agreed with the decisions of individual Princes - or even the Electorate - I strove always to advance our cause. And now, free after all of these years of forced treason, I could see only flaws in our once-noble race.

The humans were correct to describe us as arrogant, but once this would not have bothered me; once it would have been a mark of pride. Now in the blindness of my people I saw all of my old mistakes being made anew. Now I looked upon the haughty attitudes of the Captain and his crew and saw something to be subverted, used toward the fulfillment of my own goals. Their refusal to acknowledge Arbron's great value, the assumption that Toby Hamee was naught but a stupid Hork-Bajir, that they disdained the female _aristh_ and ignored the _nothlit_ Tobias…these were things I could use.

The question was: use to do _what_. I did not have a record of excellent independent decision-making, and while I could see the levers one might pull to triumph over the Captain's supposed personal conquest of Earth, I no longer had a specific goal. The Hork-Bajir Toby Hamee did, but while I understood her determination and her interest in me, her plan lacked any consideration for the Andalite species. For all of my personal quandaries, this seemed to me a grave and ubiquitous oversight: at the moment, no one seemed very concerned for the Andalites at all, and it would soon become our downfall.

The selection of Aximili as the liaison to Earth was but the tip of this problem. I knew well that the only worse candidate would have been the elder brother himself, but Aximili's long connection with the group of young humans had convinced the commanding officers of his suitability. Never mind that this association was itself a source of liability, or that Aximili was, as I had had ample opportunity to observe, a deeply unbalanced young Andalite. This was regretful and yet hardly surprising, and made our burgeoning relations with the humans all the more tenuous.

Not that anyone had asked for my opinion. Not that I might have any insight into either species; not that Esplin had once pored over all the Yeerks' collected knowledge of this new host species as thoroughly as he had the Andalites. And certainly not that Aximili could not even talk to these humans of his; not that he avoided his Prince as if abjectly afraid. Not at all.

Of course, Prince Aximili had dozens of excuses ready for the commanding officers he would soon have to placate, but none fooled me. It was clear that Aximili was prepared to avoid Earth indefinitely, even if he had to permanently cut ties with the humans to do so. He probably even saw it as something of a neat ending: what Elfangor began with such passion and willful ardor, Aximili will end coolly, conscientiously, for the good of all involved.

It was equally clear that he hadn't yet seen fit to mention any of this to the humans. They had finally reached a consensus and were scheduled to be reestablished on Earth late tomorrow, the sixth day after the final battle. The various publishing and media agents had been notified, and reports from the planet confirmed that Aximili was expected to be in attendance. Aximili was, by his own admission, of an entirely different mind. It was far from clear what he expected to do instead, but he was adamant that he would not be returning to Earth.

When asked, the _aristh_ Estrid had only cryptically remarked, ‹Prince Aximili himself does not know what Prince Aximili will do.

And, indeed, this seemed to summarize the situation quite nicely.

----

‹You know what I don't get?

It was the _nothlit_, the strange creature who was somehow both human and the son of Elfangor. He seemed both reluctant to acknowledge me and eager to talk. The reluctance was likely his _shorm_ Aximili's doing: I could hardly imagine that the young Prince was taking kindly to my continued interest in his activities.

‹No,› I replied to Tobias. ‹I do not.

This was, I knew, the proper response to this style of human questioning. Any other answer would have merely goaded him to anger.

‹I don't get how you fit into this. I don't get that at all.

I laughed. It felt good; it was the first time in years I had been so utterly amused by something. Tobias's hawk form seemed to regard me warily.

‹And you imagine that _I_ understand?› I asked.

‹I did,› he admitted, ‹but you don't really, do you? No one does. Arbron says that you guys went to the Taxxon homeworld, and that's where he became a _nothlit_, but even he doesn't understand what happened afterward.

‹Tobias,› I asked quietly, humor gone, suddenly replaced with my need to repeat this strange question, ‹do you believe in Ellimists?

Now it was Tobias who laughed, long and bitterly. ‹You're asking the morph-capable _nothlit_, you're asking Bird-boy, if he believes in the Ellimist. I've seen time stopped, the Hork-Bajir saved, gone on field trips in the past, and you wonder if I believe in the mastermind behind it all?

Again, I was surprised.

‹You have interacted with one of these creatures? _Directly_?

He nodded, an almost comical movement of his dangerous bird's head. ‹Direct enough to kill.

‹But that is impossible!

‹Think so?

He was right. Of course it was not impossible; it was just radically beyond anything I knew, anything our science accepted. But, as he said, so was a morphing _nothlit_. And I had posed the question; I myself acknowledged that only the interference of such a powerful being could properly account for my many, fragmented memories. Dimly, as if the memory of a dream, I could hear it still: the all-encompassing laughter.

‹He...he _moved_ us. Somewhere, some-_when_,› I said slowly, remembering. ‹But that was already after. Esplin was...I tried...Elfangor was there, and the girl. Both of the humans were there, but it was she who interested Esplin. He never found her, on Earth. He found the Chapman host, but never the yellow-haired one.

‹Wait,› Tobias interrupted, ‹_Chapman_?

I shook my head, trying to clear the multitude of thoughts. ‹Yes. Esplin was almost fond of him. He was – he was Esplin's first human host. _Before_.

Before. Before my infestation, I meant. Before I became a traitor to my people in the purest way possible; before my mind was opened to the most cunning of our enemies, the one who had known from the beginning that this was the way to conquer my people. Esplin had wanted us already on the Hork-Bajir world, when my only thought was of stemming the Yeerk conquest of a race of warriors; he had known the moment he saw us what we were, trying to hide in the Taxxon bodies...he would have taken Elfangor, he would have taken even Aldrea, but I was so much more delectable...!

‹Tobias?› My thought-speech sounded shaken, even to me.

‹Yes?

‹I...please get Aximili. There is much I must tell you.

As I watched Tobias fly away, I thought about what else I must do: I had to talk to Esplin. I had to know what he remembered. It was ridiculous, terrifying, would brand me a traitor a hundred times over to anyone who learned of it, but I could not bear this not-knowing. The story that had been unfolding within my mind these past days had finally stretched out, vast and familiar. Of course the boy was here; of course he was Elfangor's son. Of course Arbron. Of course, even, Toby Hamee, great-great-grandchild of the Prince I once believed responsible for all of this.

Only I saw the whole of it; only I had been there for everything. Only I...and Esplin.

----

The human called Cassie still held the Yeerk slug, now safely encased in a modern version of the portable generators my Prince Seerow had designed so long ago. It was absurd to leave him with the human child, yet no better candidate was available. Though I had once raged against the pathetically passive decision not to simply execute my former tormentor, I was now glad he was in such safe hands. Good that we eventually allow him to speak for himself, yes, but even better that he was now available when I had such need to speak to him.

It was not apparent, however, how this would be accomplished. We could not allow him any manner of host, as any creature capable of communicating was far too dangerous to entrust to Esplin. Nor was the communication device our scientists had been set to devise anywhere near ready for use. Even if it had been, it hardly would have been put at my disposal.

In the end, it was Cassie who found the solution, as distasteful as it was to both of us.

"You morph him," she said simply, her dark eyes staring intently up at me. The words made me shiver in disgust. Bad enough to have lived with him inside my head, but to _become_ him?

"I've morphed a Yeerk," she continued. "It's not as if you'll even need to take a host; all you want to do is talk to him. We can't really get his permission, of course, but..."

In this moment, with a brief flash of insight, I realized how lucky I was to have approached only Cassie. I did not like to imagine what would have happened if the other humans had been present. As it was, I was not certain I could trust even her.

‹Yes,› I agreed. ‹Only to speak to him. And best that I do it as a fellow..._Yeerk_. I do not think I could tolerate any other method.

Cassie looked at me sadly. "It must have been so awful. Even we – the Animorphs, I mean – we never...we would have killed you both, I think, if we could have."

I nodded, understanding. As I slid my hand into the warm liquid of the tank, I said quietly, ‹I wanted you to.

Acquiring Esplin was easy. The method itself is relatively simple, of course, but I was as familiar with this Yeerk as with myself. My fingers rested against his small body gently, at ease. I had hated him, I had feared him, and now...

That was a thought better left unfinished.

I looked at Cassie with my main eyes, scanning the area for a final time with my stalks. It was private, as isolated as was possible in this great Dome. I stepped closer to her so as to not be long outside the viscous environment so essential to Yeerks, and began the morph. I _became_ Esplin.

Despite myself, I savored this morph, the first in so very long. The sensations themselves were disquieting, the disappearance of the senses I relied upon never failing to disturb me. I shrank, falling and falling toward the ground as my fur was replaced with the thick slime-layer and my organs with a complex system of percolating fluids.

I remembered the first time I had seen the strange aliens, the way they had seemed so insignificant. I remembered joking with a friend that it was amazing anyone had even realized that they were intelligent, and him replying that he still was not certain they were. I remembered Prince Seerow's trust and kindness. And, as I turned into my most hated enemy, I saw how everything I had done, every reaction I had to each unfolding event of this war, had lead to this moment, and all the moments that came before. Then, just as I realized that I now _was_ my supposed enemy, I felt pressure around me and, through the Yeerk's skin, tasted the salt of a human touch. I was held briefly, then I was free, floating in warm currents and the gentle benevolence of the Kandrona rays.

I felt the touch of another! And yet, not. It was as if I were looking in one of the human's mirrors, seeing another of my own flesh. The question that this not-other seemed to have asked reflected my confusion.

‹_Brother_?

In that moment, the answer was yes. I no longer knew who I was, who this was. I was too far gone to understand the context of the question, to realize that Esplin 9466 Prime believed that, incomprehensibly, he had been presented with his true twin. Instead, I simply opened my thoughts to this other-me in an almost instinctual way, bonding with his communication palps.

‹Alloran!› came the shocked revelation and, with that, I remembered. Yes, Alloran. Yes, _me_.


	8. Co incidence

After nearly a day of constant jostling, the viscous fluid sloshing dangerously within the small confines of the portable emergency tank, I had finally been unceremoniously dumped into a much larger pool, big enough for longer-term use by several Yeerks.

This pool's Kandrona source was stronger and more concentrated, as if focused through a prism. This gave my new home a disquieting and clinical atmosphere, and told me the only thing that mattered: I was in Andalite hands, and this was a disturbingly modern and efficient version of the ship-board Pools they once built us.

I had no doubt that it came with an off-switch.

And so I waited. What else was there to do? I could not project my thought-speech far in this form, and dared not morph. It was beyond doubt that the Andalites had me under constant surveillance. They had Alloran now, just as surely as I once had. He alone knew how this isolation, this deprivation of senses would torment me.

My tank, I imagined, was set up in a viewing gallery, lighted from all angles. The walls would be clear so that all might have an unobstructed view of the pathetic slug within. This was the Andalites' cruel irony: I was to be housed in my execution chamber; I was to loll in excessive Kandrona until the moment when it would be taken away forever.

Throughout our long campaign on Earth, our need for Kandrona had been a constant weakness. Even I had become accustomed to feeding only when it had become an almost painful necessity, and so loll I did. Long ago, my ancestors had bathed near-constantly in our star's own rays, but I had long become accustomed to subsidizing on only the barest minimum of nourishment. This excess put me in a sleepy daze, filled with nostalgia for the early days of our Empire. My mind spiraled through memories: my own, Alloran's, some I could not place but had no doubt culled from the mind of some previous host...

_Flashes of red: home. Green and blue and white: also home. The mind that had screamed in despair and anger for the past weeks had been shocked into silence. I thrilled in the idyllic scenes from a life I had not yet explored. We were sprawled in the grasses of an impossible world, staring up though four eyes at tangled skies...we were young and impossibly joyous, running across thick meadow into a grove of trees..._

_And then Alloran's conscious mind resurfaced and I was plunged back into raving despair. _

It had never changed. Some hosts, I have heard, come to recognize and accept their fates. Some even join us voluntarily, as with the humans recruited through Edriss's front organization – though such specimens had never failed to disgust me. Alloran, of course, was never like that. Though I had done my utmost to break him, I had long ago realized that he was already broken. It was not that he failed to comprehend my power over him but, rather, that I paled in comparison with his own past: in that contest of wills, it was _I_ who would have ultimately broken.

Despite this, I have often thought of how fortunate the events on the Taxxon homeworld were. Without Alloran enslaved and Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul mysteriously and yet so very conveniently removed from the playing field, our grandiose dreams of the Yeerk Empire would have come to naught long before.

And now, it seemed, the very last of those dreams would be annihilated. As I felt the pressure of the fluid being forced down upon my flesh, I braced myself for death.

----

Curiously, death felt very much like being shot with a low-level Shedder beam.

I felt a brief tinge of disappointment, but then the pressure and mental daze both were gone, and I understood: I had not been eliminated, but _acquired_. Here was a new mystery to decipher. Were there traitors among the Andalites, then, as well?

We had made the occasional inroads to their precious honor and sense of duty, but why now, when I floated in a self-sustaining prison, defeated? I knew that it had been an Andalite who had touched me - my tank contained none of the residual salts and chemicals that would have leeched off of a human – but which, and why?

Several minutes went by with no further disturbances. Then, what I had been waiting for: the soft splash of another Yeerk body entering my pool.

Of course I realized that this Yeerk was simply that same Andalite in morph, but the many days of isolation had had their effect. In the first confused moment of contact with its overwhelming rush of sensations, it no longer mattered what I _knew_. This was the flesh of my very flesh, and I was plunged back into our days abroad the ship; I was forced to remember how I had raged against this truest brother of mine, how I had demanded his death. My friend! My first friend, my twin! He was here! I did not know why, but he was _here_.

**No**. This was not my brother: this was some cowardly Andalite weakling come to betray his people. This was one of the arrogant giants I had so admired; this was...

‹_Alloran_!›

It was! Palp-to-palp like this, minds as close as possible outside of a true host, he could not disguise himself from me. A shrewd and experienced Yeerk could have perhaps remained shielded, but not the Andalite I had lived within for so many years.

‹Yes,› he allowed. I felt confusion and fear surge from him: he had spoken in both his own voice and that of a Yeerk, his confirmation of my half-spoken question echoing across our bond. He pulled away and I was again alone.

I did not know what to say. _Alloran_ had come to me? Alloran, who must desire more than anyone my destruction? I did not again approach him; I could not.

‹The boy fooled you,› he snarled viciously, a sudden and strangely triumphant _non sequitur_.

He could not still be talking about Jake Berenson, the leader of those Animorphs. He had gloated over that twist of fate for so long already; had made something of a game of it at the end, biding his time until I was distracted and then shouting, "Humans!" almost gleefully.

So I asked across our little pool, my voice no doubt muted by the distance: ‹_Which_ boy?›

I could feel him moving slowly in the liquid, still careful not to touch me. A long pause, and then:

‹What? Why is everything so...?› he wondered aloud, bemused and not really addressing me. More languid movement, then he laughed: ‹The Kandrona, of course! Ca...› he trailed off, presumably addressing another in private thought-speech.

After a moment, the mind-saturating rays of Kandrona were gone. I gave a shudder of both appreciation and dread: for now it was better, but was this the beginning of the end?

‹Don't worry, Yeerk,› Alloran sneered. ‹You'll have it back, but I, at least, intend to be able to think. Bah!›

Had he been in his true form, I knew, he would have scoffed his hooves against the ground; I would have done the same.

Alloran! He should have gone on, glad to be free of me – or have killed me and been done with it. Why had he returned? To drive me insane in two-hour pieces?

Still huddled on the far side of the tank, he answered my second question with the thought-picture Andalites sometimes use when they despair of explaining something to a lesser being. I, of course, understood the intended insult quite well.

_A small, dark room, all but filled with humans. A rectangular desk; tall metal racks of drawers. The human host sits reading the letter and I, though the eyes of this new human morph, peer at the young human seated near us. He glares back at us malevolently, as if he knows who I am and wishes me dead. But when he should react, should at least be_ surprised, _all he does is roll his eyes and sigh._

_"Great. So, no money, huh? Figures."_

‹_That _boy?› I exclaimed, shocked. ‹Elfangor's son? He _knew_? Impossible! We have studied the humans, their so-called actors – not even they could have reacted so perfectly! He didn't care; he was _bored_. That boy was useless street tra--

The foreign sound of Alloran's laughter interrupted me.

‹Still you underestimate these humans, Esplin 9466. He knew _exactly_ who Elfangor was, and had a horde of morph-capable humans waiting to destroy us.› Alloran paused, a note of pride entering his voice. ‹His name is Tobias. He is the son of Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul, and he fooled you _all_.›

Again with the thought-pictures: this time the great bird that had so confounded our scientists. He flew through the air, attacking Hork-Bajir, drawing them to one side - herding them as surely as the humans did sheep - and not one noticed. Then a laboratory, sketched in with sharp, dark angles and little detail. A red light; a blue. Yes, I knew this morph, if it could be said to be a morph when he could remain a bird for days at a time.

‹_Impossible..._› I murmured to myself, but it was an old protest. Nothing was impossible any more.

Alloran seemed to agree.

‹You think so, Esplin? Then tell me this: you never once questioned the authenticity of that letter. Why? Why would you have believed that Elfangor, an Andalite War Prince, one of our greatest heroes, could have a human child on Earth? _Why_?›

‹You know the answer to that,› I spat. I surged across the tank to be able to speak to him as clearly as he could to me. I felt his shudder as I latched on to his – my – body.

‹You would never accept it, but you _knew_!› I continued, ‹He ran away! He could have destroyed us, could have destroyed _me_, and he chose not to. He left with that damnable human girl -- and no doubt she is the boy's mother, if he is human as you say!›

‹The girl is dead,› Alloran remarked weakly.

‹So? Elfangor is as well, and does it matter?›

‹No – no, you _idiot_,› he shot back at me. ‹You watched her die! She was abroad the Blade Ship, in the end.›

‹Nonsense,› I replied. ‹A _girl_? Humans age, Alloran. They double-crossed my traitorous brethren; it was one of the human Animorphs we saw.›

‹Then what...?› He stopped – then declared, inexplicably: ‹_Arbron_.›

I was confused.

‹...A Taxxon.›

‹An Andalite _nothlit_,› Alloran sneered.

‹Yes, and what of him? He must also be long dead, no doubt eaten in some pit on their miserable homeworld.›

‹But he is not,› Alloran countered, now gloating. ‹He's _here_.›

I began to laugh. There was nothing for it. Now all we needed was Elfangor, truly shown up from the dead. The boy Tobias, Arbron, Alloran, these Animorphs, me...the Andalites' Ellimists could not have arranged things better.

‹Alloran,› I asked finally, ‹why not just kill me, after everything? Why are you _here_?›

‹You are a sadistic monster,› he said almost conversationally. ‹It would have been just like you to know everything, to understand what happened, and just refuse to tell me.›

‹Yes,› I agreed spitefully. ‹It would be. Now leave, my little slug, unless you wish to remain in this form forever. _Leave_.›

And at the surface, another pair of hands – this time human – reached in to scoop the Yeerk out.

. 

. 

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[A/N: For what it's worth, I'm not thrilled about resorting to the angled quotes, but I find them least-appalling. (FYI, the codes are "& lsaquo ;" and "& rsaquo ;")


End file.
